New Frontier – At The Auction

I went to an estate auction last Saturday with my husband and my friend, Sara.  None of us had ever been to an auction before, but we were open to trying something new and it was a beautiful, sunny day, so we piled in the car and drove about 30 mins to the estate of someone who used to own an auto repair shop.

It was totally different than anything we had ever been to before!  It wasn’t set up like the auction houses you see on TV.  It basically looked like a giant garagle sale in someone’s yard, but you had to wait until the auction started to buy stuff. After we figured out how to sign up for a number and how to bid, we totally got into the swing of things.  Hubs wandered over to the auto section of auction, while my friend Sara and I camped out in the housewares section.

Then we started winning things. 

I have to admit, it was pretty undignified, even for me. We were clapping our hands and squealing when the other won something they wanted, and by the end of the first hour we had our arms filled with treasures and a very bemused crowd around us. Someone took pity on us and gave us boxes, another person gave us some newspapers to put around our glass items to keep them from banging together.  But most just laughed at us, not in a mean-spirited way, but I think they laughed with us because we were so obviously enjoying ourselves.  At least I hope they did. If we annoyed anyone, I apologize!

Sara walked out with three boxes of treasures. She got a set of vintage stoneware similar to some her grandmother had left her and a great green pitcher and bowl with a curved edge.

I got an Apollo Ware melamine bowl with pastel splatters in it.  I LOVE it.  It has some light utensil marks on the inside, but it will make a great chip bowl.

I also got a great set of vintage glasses. They aren’t as old as some other ones I’ve had, but I love that these are a little heavier, and since we use the vintage glasses for everyday, it will be nice if they can take a beating and still be functional. We have broken two vintage glasses in as many months, and are starting to feel pretty bad about abusing them.

After the housewares section of the auction was over, they started on the furniture and other items.  These “other items” consisted of seized drug bust items from the state of Michigan, like semi-automatic guns and electronics plastered with evidence stickers. Seriously.  So, we played with the guns for a while, took pictures of Sara holding a Bushmaster and laughed and then cashed out our purchases. Sara’s total was under $20, and ours was a little over, since Hubs had bought some tools. All in all, pretty good entertainment for a Saturday afternoon. 

We can’t wait until the next one!

This Week’s Thrifting Finds – Thrifted Fabric & Linens

Not much to report this week on the thrifting front!  I have been hunkered down in my house for most of the week, working on my novel and posting for you lovely readers, so I haven’t had much time to scrounge.  However, I did have time to take a quick peek into the thrift stores on Monday, and I found the following:

I found a few yards of this great vintage cotton fabric. It is interesting because has a lot of different vertical patterns that alternate. This is just a sample of a few of them. This is another great candidate for pillows.

I also found a great rectangular tablecloth. I love the daisy pattern, and it is going to look great on the three season porch in the summer.

And I got both for under $2!

Top of the Fridge

Here are two vintage whiskey bottles from my grandfather that now have a place of honor on top of our fridge. 

These are James Beam Distilling Company bottles made by Genuine Regal China. They made a ton of them from about 1960-1980 (drink that whiskey, America!), but because of the many different types of bottles, they are still highly collectible. And if you want to start your own collection, there is no better time than now.  Since they overproduced a lot of these bottles, prices have actually gone DOWN over the years, and they are priced anywhere from about $10-20 a bottle. You can usually find them at the usual suspects, including Ebay.

The dog bottle is cute, but I love the swordfish.  It matches my pink and blue kitchen exactly!

Melamine On The Walls

There is so much to learn about Mid-Century style.  Every day I head over to Retro Renovation, read one of Pam’s posts and think, “I didn’t know that.”  Then I go to the local thrift store and I see a cool glass or a piece of furniture and I think, “Wow, that’s new.”

And now, something else that blows my mind.  Vintage melamine panels for the wall.

For those of you who, like me, are just discovering the joys of melamine and melamac, here is an ad for baked melamine tongue-and-groove panels for the walls.  I didn’t know you could put melamine on the walls. I always thought veneers were either wood or a resin type plastic, but here I am learning something new. I wonder what colors the old Marlite used to come in?  If they would have had pink, I would have been all over it.

If you are interested, Marlite planks are still avaliable today.

And for those of you who are old hands at this and are rolling your eyes, bear with me. I’m new.

The Unlucky Glasses – New Thrifted Finds

I should know better than to try and take pictures of things on Friday the 13th.  Not that I am supersitious, but still.

The caption of this photo should be: In Memorium. These glasses no longer exsist. Right after I finished taking this picture, one of my cats lunged at another lounging cat from behind my white backdrop and propelled one glass into the other at an enormous rate of speed. Both glasses literally exploded,  and a shower of glass rained all over my backdrop, my carpet, me and a very startled cat. I had to get the vaccum and everyone else had a time out in the basement. I also had to throw away the white background cloth. Better safe than sorry. Sigh.

 

Ok, photography session: take two.  The vintage tablecloth underneath is a recent find too, so I suppose it isn’t a bad thing that I was forced to use it.

The pink container is a planter, I believe, but I think I am going to put it in my pink bathroom and have it hold make-up brushes.  It was 25 cents.  The mini-muffin pan was 89 cents and is going to join the other mini-pans I have been slowly accumulating.  The vintage fake pearls are a great extra long strand that I found for $1.99. I love them because they have that great bone color, rather than being the glowing white of some of my other pearl strands.

And here is a little fun with the close-up button!I hope you survived Friday the 13th with no mishaps and no exploding glasses!

Decision Made – Goodbye Yellow Butter Dish!

I have put my cute plastic yellow butter dish up for sale in my Etsy store, if anyone was lusting after it.

Just make sure you take good care of her.  She was such a good little dish…sniff….

Cute Vintage Cards – Lion Birthday Card

I think I have mentioned before that my grandfather was a total packrat.  He kept everything; receipts, letters, bills, multiple copies of photos from his business and tons and tons of greeting cards.

My father was so disgusted when we first started cleaning out my grandfather’s house that he pitched out a lot of cards before even packing up the truck to move my grandmother to Wisconsin. Then he lost steam, and the rest of the cards were packed away in a shed on my parent’s property for me to find years later.

This cute little guy is from my Dad’s 5th birthday in 1955. I love the spotted blue collar around Leo. Cute! 

Great Resale in Tawas City

The trip to Tawas City Hubs and I took last Friday was a great little road trip.  We found great new places to shop and a cute little lakeside town to visit that was less than an hour away from our house.  One of the great things about living in Michigan (and yes, there are many great things!) is the abundance of old-fashioned “lakeside resort” type towns, complete with cabin rentals, seasonal gift shops and the required three ice cream parlors.

But the greatest thing about Tawas City was the three resale shops we found outside of town.  CC’s Closet Resale, Fabulous Finds of Tawas, and Mr. Thrifty were all very nice resale shops owned by the same couple.  I know, because we met the wife in Fabulous Finds, and she was very nice. CC’s Closet and Fabulous Finds had great stock in them, I am assured it is ever-changing, and priced to move.  While not dirt cheap, the prices were reasonable for good merchandise. They had some vintage Fiesta and Pyrex at well below the prices normally asked at antique stores and some well-priced furniture as well. But the greatest was Mr. Thrifty, which had an additional 25% off resale prices. Mr. Thrifty is basically an estate liquidation center, and it was H-E-A-V-E-N. Loved it!  I got a Harlequin serving bowl for $3.00. Pretty sweet!

Here are some of the great things at these three thrift stores:

Great vintage lamp at Fabulous Finds.  Not sure if I have ever seen anything like it before!  I got really excited when I saw it, and then Hubs pointed out that it kind of looked like Beetlejuice.  He is right, but I just thought the striped body was such a neat concept. It was $35, which I consider pretty reasonable.  

Here is another great find – a Youngstown Cabinet at CC’s Closet, complete with sink and faucet!  I love the boomerang handles.

 

A very cool red ceramic topped table at Fabulous Finds with an interesting design on the top.  Very good condition!

A vintage stove at Mr. Thrifty.  Didn’t have a price on it yet, but I thought it was very cool.

 

 

 

And last, but not least, a vintage pink sink Mr. Thrifty had in the public restroom.  Hubs came out of the restroom all excited and asked for the camera…I was a little scared of what the picture might be of, and was very relieved to see the vintage sink… 🙂

Glorious Thrift – Part II

Here is the second round of thrifted items from my recent thrifting trip.  I am really excited about these, but the upcoming posts are going to be great too! Hubs and I drove to Tawas City in MI yesterday and saw some great stuff. Of course, I took lots of pictures!

But back to the stuff at hand.  Here is the second half of my thrift:

A pretty good hall, if I do say so myself.  The wrinkled piece of gingham under my treasures is actually a treasure itself – a little half apron with white ric-rac trim.  So cute!  My mom is having an apron pattern giveaway on her blog, and I am seriously thinking about entering this. She hasn’t had many entries, so maybe I would win. 🙂  That is probably against the rules somewhere, but who cares?

The red bowl is a super cute melamine bowl, and it has black speckles in it.  I originally bought it to resell, but I am totally keeping it.  It has the most enchanting mark on the bottom, and it was made in Freedonia, WI.  Since I am originally from Wisconsin, that pretty much sealed the deal for me.

Isn’t that the best? I wonder if it is a Christmas bowl, or if Holiday was just the name of the line.  Well, time to do some research!

I also picked up these four adorable glass bowls.  They seemed to have some gold leaves on them in addition to the persimmon and aqua flowers, but most of the gold is worn off.  I still thought they were charming, so  I bought them.  Unfortunatly, I noticed three flea-bite chips in one of them when I took a better look at home. Drat!  Ah well, such is thrifting.

The last item is this rectangular blue tablecloth with white flowers embroidered in it.  I think it is great, but also the most expensive item I bought at $3.50.  But it was so nice, and different from the other embroidered tableclothes I own, just for the fact it is blue and not white.

So, there is the total haul, and I spent less than $12 for all of it; today’s and yesterday’s. Pretty good!  And come back tomorrow for more vintage 1950’s Michigan!

1956 Formica Ad – Popular Science Magazine

This is a great vintage Formica Ad that I found in the issue of Popular Science that has been giving the instructions for the Mid-Century Showplace Home.  The smeared quality of the picture isn’t my fault, I swear!  It is printed like that in the magazine, which is too bad.  I think it is a great ad – the green bathroom and the reference to the helpless husband!